Vroom!

Starred review from April 15, 2019
In this high-octane adventure, the hero does just as she pleases and makes it back in time for bed. One evening, Annie fits her helmet over her mass of red curls with a big smile on her face, gets into her race car—a sleek, torpedo-shaped unit that sits low to the ground—and rockets right out of her open bedroom window, the car leaving a stream of exhaust over the backyard. “It was a fine evening for a drive,” the narrator continues, with delicious understatement, as Annie and her car blast across an impossibly expansive vista of plowed fields, and great mountains loom on the horizon. She hurtles on through magnificent stretches of geography—scaling peaks, sailing through red rock formations, zooming through forests and along city streets—before overtaking a surprised field of competitors on a race course and heading home. McClintock’s crisp, clean landscape spreads have the precision of architectural drawings, and her economically told story offers all the greatest charms of adventure: being on one’s own, seeing new places, and going really, really fast. It’s a richly gratifying fantasy. Ages 4–7.

Starred review from May 1, 2019
The title says it all. Her auburn hair billowing behind like a second cloud of exhaust, little Annie peels out of her bedroom window in a silver bullet of a car. Helmet and gloves in place, she takes straight roads past fields of grain, twists up snow-capped mountains, zooms through deserts and woods. In the city, traffic slows her down for a second, and then she's winning races, ultimately ending safely back home in a familiar room. "Tomorrow would be another fine day for a drive." Writing with cadences plucked straight out of Sendak's playbook, McClintock never wastes a syllable. Annie's journey encapsulates "hot and dry" deserts and a "cool, damp forest." The book allows kids the exhilaration of escape, coupling speed and danger with a warm bed and cuddle after a long day. Vast panoramic vistas from on high contrast exquisitely with intimate shots like that of Annie's face in her rear-view mirror. Little details include the hubcaps that adorn Annie's bedroom wall or the bald eagle peeking out of a tree as the girl whizzes past. The book doesn't just put readers in Annie's shoes. It dares them to find shoes of their own and let their imaginations take the wheel. Annie and her family present white. Max had his wolf suit and Llama Llama his red pajamas; Annie has her racing togs. She fits right in. (Picture book. 3-6)

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Starred review from May 15, 2019
Preschool-K *Starred Review* Meet Annie, a little girl in white pajamas and a helmet. She hops into her race car and drives out her second-floor bedroom window for an evening adventure. Her journey takes her by flat farm fields, along a curvy mountain road, through a hot desert and a cool forest, across a wide river, and into a city, where she enters a racetrack, drives fast, and leaves her competition in the dust. Arriving back home, she zooms upstairs to her bedroom, where she climbs into bed for a family read-aloud session. The simple, straightforward text immediately draws viewers into Annie's fantasy. Her journey is as real to her as her race car. Gleaming when the evening begins, it looks scuffed and mud-spattered at the end. The artwork has wit, a Sendakian sensibility, dynamic line work, and a strong structural quality. Children will enjoy the many intriguing details, from the bedroom scene where hubcaps and road signs decorate the walls to the forest picture with its backseat-rider's view of Annie, animals among the trees, and reflections in the rearview mirrors. A captivating picture book for the many young children who are fascinated by cars and driven by the need for speed.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)